Biography

American writer, a novelist, screenwriter and short story writer of the 1920s. He set the pace and enjoyed early success as a spokesman for a rebellious generation during the Roaring Twenties. Totally charming with a strong desire for approval, he was always preoccupied with wealth and social status. His stories and novels dealt mainly with the rich whose intrigues and decadence fascinated the middle class. Between 1919 and 1924, he wrote 3 novels, 160 short stories, a play and several articles and films.

The son of a salesman and grandson of an Irish immigrant, Fitzgerald came from a good family who were well off until the depression of 1893. While studying at Princeton University, he began writing. It was at this time he began his drinking habit.

In 1917, he sold his first poem and left Princeton. In Montgomery, Alabama, he was commissioned as Second Lieutenant in the army. At a country club social dance in July 1918, he met Zelda Sayre, born 7/24/1900. On 4/03/1920 they were married, together setting the pace for The Jazz Age which they epitomized by partying for ten years. Their extravagant lifestyle earned them the reputation of the "darling couple of the flaming youth era." Their only child, daughter Frances, whom they called Scottie, was born 10/26/1921.

The year 1919 was eventful. In February Fitzgerald was discharged from the army and took a job in an advertising agency in New York. In the spring, he attempted suicide (as he attempted again in 1935 or 1936), and in October he sold his first story to the Saturday Evening Post.

In March 1920, he published the scandalous for its times "This Side of Paradise," earning him the reputation of a young genius, acclaimed as a writer of great promise by the age of 23. From then on he sold everything that he wrote including such classics of American literature as "The Great Gatsby" and "Tender is the Night." From 1925, Zelda slipped deeper and deeper into dementia, in and out of sanitariums as a result of her deteriorating mental health.

By 1937, he was deeply in debt to hospitals and friends and went to Hollywood to write screenplays for MGM. Due to his difficult temperament, his one-year contract was not renewed. At this time he met and began an affair with British gossip columnist, Sheilagh Graham. The affair continued during his last three years. In November 1940, Fitzgerald suffered a mild heart attack that left him pale, weak and shaken. He recuperated for two months while writing in bed. He also suffered from tuberculosis and prescription drug addiction as well as alcoholism. While working on "The Last Tycoon," he died of a heart attack at the age of 44, on 12/21/1940, Hollywood, California.

Zelda survived him by seven years, dying on 3/10/1948 along with eight other women in a hospital fire in Asheville, NC. Upon her death, her husband's coffin was dug up and the grave made deeper so that she could be interred with him.

Source Notes

Ruth Hale Oliver quotes Sara Mayfield, "Exiles From Paradise," 1971.

baby book page

From baby book page recording full data filed with ADB. Matthew Joseph Bruccoli, Scottie Fitzgerald Smith, and Joan Paterson Kerr's "The Romantic Egoists: A Pictorial Autobiography from the Scrapbooks and Albums of F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald" (2003) provides the document on page 5. In May 2013, forum user Red Bull pointed to this source.